Basically, this is a list of major game changes since Round Z (I was going to use X, but everyone would think that was Round 10 :P)
In general, defence is harder as more people attack for XP. Defence is as much to stop people getting XP from roids as to stop roid loss.

Each planet now has a population which you can set to work on research, construction, production, security and mining. This increases the bonus of your planet in this area. This replaces engineering, if you knew about engineering

Each planet also has a government settable in the first 168 ticks after you've been upgraded. This gives you benefits in some areas at the cost of other areas.

You can now "pre-launch" your fleet, which allows you to schedule your launch for up to 12 ticks in the future. When pre launched, your fleet will not take part in combat
You can also set your base fleet to "run and hide", where your base fleet will not take part in combat.

Most players quickly find an alliance to become a member of. Alliance tools have been extensively integrated into the game.

Covert ops is another option to cause damage to opposing planets. You can purchase agents to perform missions to damage opposing planets, instantly.

The galaxy status page updates on the tick - launching fleets earlier won't show on galaxy status. They do still show on the "jumpgate probe" scan though.

Ships are launched eta X, show up at eta X-1, land, and return home eta X-1.

The last new major addition is covert ops - similar to scans in some ways, covert ops allows you to send agents to hostile planets to steal resources, destroy ships or constructions, and so forth. It involves a random element, as scans used to. You can be immune to covert ops using an engineering setting and/or having a certain percentage of your constructions as security centres (see the manual here for more information).

There are also 5 new races, with the newest, Eitraides, joining in Round 20.

The startup system is now instant - you get 2 million resources to allocate to your planet, in exchange for a shorter protection rate.

You can only send ships for 1 tick of attack/defence

There's also a basic quest system.

Major chances since:

Round 1-3

Game now has the option to upgrade your account for a one off bonus.

Now we have 5 separate races instead of a tree with choices.
Combat has changed - gone are wpsd, agil, and the target all classes option. Some rounds, ships only have 1 target.
Instead, we have "armour" "damage" "init" and "class" - chance to hit another ship is 100%. EMP resistance is present though.
Combat happens over 1 tick - only 1 tick of attack and defence is allowed.
There's no PDS
Races were introduced: Terran, Cathaar, Xandrithii, Zikonian and Eitraides
Terran have big ships that fire late, with heavy armour and poor damage. Cathaar ships have high powered EMP ships and poor damage ships. Xan have small fast ships with a form of cloaking. Zik are harder to play, and steal ships. Eitraides have at least one of each of the steal, cloaked and EMP ships, as well as normal ships. Their special ability is to trade with the universe fund for a lesser price. They also get more salvage when defending.
Cluster ETA bonuses for attack have been removed.
Order slots introduced - you're only allowed 5 orders at once.
No such thing as a military scan any more - there's a fleet scan, which shows all non-cloaked ships heading your way.
There's also a new Advanced Unit Scan, which shows all ships (including cloaked ships) accurately, unlike the unit scan which suffers from distortion.

Round 4
Game now has the option to upgrade your account for a one off bonus.

Combat has changed - gone are wpsd, agil, and the target all classes option. Some rounds, ships only have 1 target.
Instead, we have "armour" "damage" "init" and "class" - chance to hit another ship is 100%. EMP resistance is present though.
Combat happens over 1 tick - only 1 tick of attack and defence is allowed.
There's no PDS (YAY!)
Races were introduced: Terran, Cathaar, Xandrithii, Zikonian and Eitraides
Terran have big ships that fire late, with heavy armour and poor damage. Cathaar ships have high powered EMP ships and poor damage ships. Xan have small fast ships with a form of cloaking. Zik are harder to play, and steal ships. Eitraides have at least one of each of the steal, cloaked and EMP ships, as well as normal ships. Their special ability is to trade with the universe fund for a lesser price. They also get more salvage when defending.
No such thing as a military scan any more - there's a fleet scan, which shows all non-cloaked ships heading your way.
There's also a new Advanced Unit Scan, which shows all ships (including cloaked ships) accurately, unlike the unit scan which suffers from distortion.

Researches and Constructions have changed - all previous researches and constructions are now just researches, and as such are free. Constructions are buildings you make on your planet to enable ship production or give some form of benefit to your planet.

Scans are different - you don't have to buy them in advanced, they're just there. There's no more wave scans to discover uninitated asteroids, they're just *there* and you initiate through the mining screen.
Wave Amplifiers and Distorters/deflectors/reflectors are now constructions, and have a straightforward formula - either you can scan, or you can't.
Cluster ETA bonuses have been removed.

Round 5
Combat has changed - gone are wpsd, agil, and the target all classes option. Some rounds, ships only have 1 target.
Instead, we have "armour" "damage" "init" and "class" - chance to hit another ship is 100%. EMP resistance is present though.
Combat happens over 1 tick - only 1 tick of attack and defence is allowed.
There's no PDS (YAY!)
Races were introduced: Terran, Cathaar, Xandrithii, Zikonian and Eitraides
Terran have big ships that fire late, with heavy armour and poor damage. Cathaar ships have high powered EMP ships and poor damage ships. Xan have small fast ships with a form of cloaking. Zik are harder to play, and steal ships. Eitraides have at least one of each of the steal, cloaked and EMP ships, as well as normal ships. Their special ability is to trade with the universe fund for a lesser price. They also get more salvage when defending.
No such thing as a military scan any more - there's a fleet scan, which shows all non-cloaked ships heading your way.
There's also a new Advanced Unit Scan, which shows all ships (including cloaked ships) accurately, unlike the unit scan which suffers from distortion.

Researches and Constructions have changed - all previous researches and constructions are now just researches, and as such are free. Constructions are buildings you make on your planet to enable ship production or give some form of benefit to your planet.

Scans are different - you don't have to buy them in advanced, they're just there. There's no more wave scans to discover uninitated asteroids, they're just *there* and you initiate through the mining screen.
Wave Amplifiers and Distorters/deflectors/reflectors are now constructions, and have a straightforward formula - either you can scan, or you can't.
Cluster ETA bonuses have been removed.

Round 6-9.5
Combat has changed - gone are wpsd, agil, and the target all classes option. Some rounds, ships only have 1 target.
Instead, we have "armour" "damage" "init" and "class" - chance to hit another ship is 100%. EMP resistance is present though.
Combat happens over 1 tick - only 1 tick of attack and defence is allowed.
There's no PDS (YAY!)
No such thing as a military scan any more - there's a fleet scan, which shows all non-cloaked ships.

Researches and Constructions have changed - all previous researches and constructions are now just researches, and as such are free. Constructions are buildings you make on your planet to enable ship production or give some form of benefit to your planet.

Scans are different - you don't have to buy them in advanced, they're just there. There's no more wave scans to discover uninitated asteroids, they're just *there* and you initiate through the mining screen.
Wave Amplifiers and Distorters/deflectors/reflectors are now constructions, and have a straightforward formula - either you can scan, or you can't.
Cluster ETA bonuses have been removed.

There's a new race, called Eitraides. Eitraides have at least one of each of the steal, cloaked and EMP ships, as well as normal ships. Their special ability is to trade with the universe fund for a lesser price.

Round 10-10.5
Combat has changed : no more disturbance stuff, pods are back! We have 6 classes of ship, and they all take different ETAs to send again.
XP is capped.

I'd like to add a major difference I noticed today.
Fleet return times are 1h shorter than the listed launch times.

Today 11 planets in my gal had a total of 90 hostiles, I had 4 spread over 4 ticks so I send my fleet with ETA 5 to defend a galmate, working out that it will return the tick after my 4th hostile does, thus safe.

Alas after combat at my galmates (I kill all the attacking pods we take 0 losses) it is returning ETA 4h which coincides with the 4th hostile fleet at my planet.

Lucky for me that is a cath fleet and likely won't harm me, but it could have meant doom for my fleet.

There is nothing in the manual about return times being shorter, This is very bad.

__________________
There are 10 types of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.

I'd like to add a major difference I noticed today.
Fleet return times are 1h shorter than the listed launch times.

Today 11 planets in my gal had a total of 90 hostiles, I had 4 spread over 4 ticks so I send my fleet with ETA 5 to defend a galmate, working out that it will return the tick after my 4th hostile does, thus safe.

Alas after combat at my galmates (I kill all the attacking pods we take 0 losses) it is returning ETA 4h which coincides with the 4th hostile fleet at my planet.

Lucky for me that is a cath fleet and likely won't harm me, but it could have meant doom for my fleet.

There is nothing in the manual about return times being shorter, This is very bad.

It's not actually shorter, it's just got an instant turn-around. So there's a moment when it's eta 1 to the planet then it lands and it's eta 5 back home, but then it ticks and it's eta 4. I explained this poorly

__________________Some might ask what good is life without purpose but I'm anticipating a good lunch.

As to why ships seem to travel home faster, think of hitting the 'launch' button as turning on the engines, whilst the fleet doesnt actually go anywhere untill the next tick (which is why you can instantly recall them too). Thus it takes the same amount of time to travel back and forth, and battle (if any) is instant.

The way any logical person sees it is if it takes 5h there it will take 5h back. This is not a role playing game where you can make up in character reasons for why things work a certain way and have them accepted regardless of them not being in any way logical.

if a galmate has incomings 5h after I do, he should be able to send defense to me, and after combat it should take the exact same time for my fleet and his fleet to travel from my planet to his and do combat there. Anything other than that is totally illogical and can't be good.

Both his fleet and my fleet have engines on and all guns blazing in this scenario. making Ultimate Newbies reason unvalid.

As for JonnybeGood's strange explanation with dashes.. I can't even understand it, so..

__________________
There are 10 types of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.

The way any logical person sees it is if it takes 5h there it will take 5h back.

That would be true. Similarly, if it takes 4 hours to get there, it should take 4 hours to get back. Which is what i said in my above post: your fleet doesnt actually launch untill the tick after you hit the launch button - this is demonstrated by the news item that you receive once a fleet has been launched. Thus, it "really" takes 4 hours to travel inside your own galaxy, however in PAX when it was set up like this people kept stuffing up the ETAs. So it was changed such that you must hit the launch button at ETA 5 such that your fleet and the enemy fleet match ETA at ETA 4 which is the actual time it takes in-galaxy.

Quote:

This is not a role playing game where you can make up in character reasons for why things work a certain way and have them accepted regardless of them not being in any way logical.

well, many things in PA are made up - ship stats are one - and other things dont make much sense - logical or otherwise. however, they exist for a reason and that is to make the game (more or less) playable. get over it.

Personally, i dont think it is important really to understand why something works per se; rather, all you need to know is that to defend your galaxymates, match the ETAs - ie, if your galaxymate has ETA 5 incoming, launch your fleet with no prelaunch tick. If it is ETA 6, launch with 5+1, ETA 7 is 5+2 etc etc. Further, keep in mind that return ETA is always Original ETA - 1; thus your "ETA 5" in-gal fleet returns in 4 ticks.

I think a lot more emphasis should be put on xp for new players. It encourages intelligent play, integration into the community (because you have to learn from someone what to do) and prevents them from getting disheartened when their planet gets hit. I'm sure a few in-the-know individuals would be only too delighted to write up some basic guide to the whole concept of attacking, defending, xp etc.

__________________Some might ask what good is life without purpose but I'm anticipating a good lunch.